Monday, May 16, 2011

ExecutiveOfficeCenter owners, Steven and Jack Blumner may have hit upon a novel idea when they opened their state-of-the-art business center in the fall. The brothers, former owners of First Choice Real Estate, once the top selling residential brokerage in Queens, are not merely landlords. They are actively engaged in helping their tenants make more money.

Since opening in October, the ExecutiveOfficeCenter at Fresh Meadows has attracted 50 tenants and virtual tenants, including seventeen attorneys. “We’re right on schedule,” says Executive Director Jack Blumner, who expects that number to double by the end of the year.

The ExecutiveOfficeCenter, offering serviced office suites and Queens virtual office services, is the first such business center to open in the borough of Queens. There are scores of executive suite office centers in Manhattan and Long Island, but none until now in the densely populated borough of Queens.

Executive suite centers typically offer a menu of administrative services to their tenants, but supplementing these services with marketing support elevates the concept of serviced office space to a new level.

Jack and Steven Blumner are no strangers to marketing. In the 1990s they made their company, First Choice Real Estate, a household name in Queens by sending out millions of pieces direct mail to homeowners in the borough. Now they are using the World Wide Web to help accomplish their objectives.

·www.everythingunder1roof.com is a business directory of the ExecutiveOfficeCenter at Fresh Meadows tenants that shortcuts the customer’s hunt for business and professional services in Queens. There are presently 50 companies affiliated with the office center. In time, there will be several hundred, says Mr. Blumner, “and we want Queens consumers to know that they can find virtually everything they need right here under one roof.”

·www.queensforless.com offers coupon discounts for Queens neighborhood stores and restaurants, while featuring the professional and business services of the ExecutiveOfficeCenter’s tenants. Consumers are lured to the website by attractive retail discounts. Once there, they also find the many different professional and business services offered by tenants of the ExecutiveOfficeCenter.

Tenants of the ExecutiveOfficeCenter are also featured on the 16 foot LED display that faces the busy parking lot of the Fresh Meadows shopping center. The ExecutiveOfficeCenter is the perfect place for attorneys and other solo professionals and small companies doing business in the borough of Queens. It is ideal for companies that need a branch or satellite office in the borough. The ExecutiveOfficeCenter is also the closest office business center to JFK and LaGuardia airports. Business travelers to New York may wish to take advantage of the building’s close proximity to the airports. Day suites and conference rooms are available at hourly, daily and weekly rates.

Monday, May 2, 2011

I like to sweep the sidewalk in front of my office building. It reminds me of my father.

As the broom flicks up the dust and leaves that seem to gravitate toward the entrance to the building every morning, I recall the dust clouds that my father’s push broom would launch, as he swept up his building site at the end of each day.

I could delegate this particular task to the company I pay to clean my office building every day, but I haven’t, and I believe that this is the reason.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is fitting for me to remember my father in the words of this blog, because he and my mother were survivors of that most infamous period in the history of mankind. My mother survived the death camps by the grace of G-d. My father survived the war in the woods in Poland for two and half years, through a combination of grit, cunning, iron will, and fortitude.

My parents met and married at the end of the war and arrived in New York aboard the SS Marine Flasher on May 28, 1948. Their first stop in the America was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where my father worked in a mattress factory for relatives. After six months, they made their way to New York’s lower East Side. My father told me that when he told his relatives of his decision to go to New York, they said to him, “But you will get lost in New York.” To which my father replied: “If I didn’t get lost in the woods for two and a half years, I won’t get lost in New York.”

In New York, my father graduated from making mattresses to making table pads, then went on to a series of jobs in the food business. He bought a luncheonette in Brooklyn, and learned Spanish from a pocket guide, while he was still struggling to master English. One day, a construction project across the street from the luncheonette, caught his attention. Every day, he went outside to watch the construction. Then, as legend has it, he went out and bought a set of architectural plans for a house for $50, and began his career as a builder. Afterwards, he built homes in New Jersey for 40 years, until we had to retire him at the age of 75.

Back to sweeping the sidewalk: My father once told me that being a Jew in Poland during the years of World War II was “like being nothing.” “A dog’s life had more value,” he said. But my father withstood the brutality of that nefarious regime with his mind and body, and dignity intact. And he survived in America as he survived in the woods, meeting every challenge that faced him, doing whatever it took to survive.

Like many children of Holocaust survivors, I have often asked myself the question: Would I have survived? Two and a half years outdoors in the cold, without food or shelter. Would I have had the physical strength, the wits or the guile? Probably not. No, definitely not. That’s why, with each flick of the broom, I say, “I’m like you, pops. I’m sweeping, too.”